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“The ocean doesn’t like that we left it. It was our home, and we need to go back in.” She said, plainly. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He had thought she’d only appear near water, but he seemed to have been mistaken.
“It hasn’t been our ‘home’ for thousands of years, Circe. It’s a body of water. It’s filled with kelp, salmon, and trash. It can’t ‘want’.” He snapped, trying not to look at her. The soldier had her head tilted softly, goggles covering pitch-dark eyes that did nothing to stop the thick discolored ink from flowing down her face. She smiled at him, nodding to herself as if he’d given her some kind of sage advice. Cod, his entire body ached.
To tell the truth, He knew it wasn’t her. She’d died four years ago, he hadn’t been able to do anything, all his fault, whatever. He had been burying that tragedy for a long time, and didn’t care to think about it. Circe died a long time ago, to a parasite he had no way of knowing how to deal with, let alone any antibiotics or other supplies good enough to treat. Whatever was sitting with him on the concrete was not his friend. Vengeful spirit, maybe. Perhaps he was simply seeing things.
“You’ll join me, at some point. You will.”
“Will I?”
“You’ll get tired. You’ll get depressed, and you’ll walk into the sea willingly. Maybe, you’ll keep studying parasites, and one of your patients will attack you, and you won’t be able to treat it in time. Or maybe;” She leaned in close, looming over him as he lay on his back on the concrete floor of Octo Canyon.
“Maybe, you’ll fall asleep by the shore, and I’ll fill you with sea water while your guard is down.”
He sighed, in much the same way anyone would when faced with a teenager making threats.
“I miss you. I want you to come home with me.” She frowned.
He weighed the pros and cons of refusing to say anything further in his head. He listened to the wind howl in the distance, and voices echoed through the open air with excitement. The Not!Circe shifted slightly, waiting for him to respond.
It was hard to explain the dread that he felt when he looked at her. It wasn’t cold, but not necessarily burning. Quieter, like smoke was filling his chest. She was a baby faced fifteen year old, too pale and unhealthily thin to really be threatening. Her uniform barely fit, goggles practically tied to her face. She had seemed capable once he was sure, when he was younger and she had been assigned to guard him. But now, after everything, she just seemed small, even for her age. Sick, maybe even malicious, but she was just a little teenager trying to be scary.
“Odysseus?” Circe frowned.
He was one to talk, Odysseus supposed. With the way his luck seemed to go, he guessed that one day she’d be proven right. Maybe he would let his guard down.
“I’m sorry Circe.”
Someone called his name from afar.
Some day, maybe he’d get dragged kicking and screaming to a watery grave. Perhaps he even deserved it. It’s not like he’d be able to fight back. He huffed and cringed in discomfort, struggling to move after lying on such a hard surface for so long.
Circe was gone by the time he sat up.
He fought through the exhaustion to focus on whoever was coming towards him.
“Who.” She deadpanned. “Was that?”
Ah. So he probably hadn’t been hallucinating.
The inkling in front of Odysseus looked at him with suspicion. She barely trusted him, and evidently was not pleased to see him talking to an Octarian soldier. Even if said soldier possibly wasn’t real.
He shook his head. “I thought I was just seeing things. I promise I’m not in contact with anyone from the army.”
Marie stared at him further. Odysseus wondered if this was what the books he’d been reading had meant by someone being able to stare directly at your soul. He decided he hated being stared at.
“If you’re being haunted by some kind of evil spirit can you at least make sure it’s not gonna scare Agent Four? The other day she ran to me whimpering about how there was some freaky soldier that wanted to drown her.”
“Wait.” He started. “You actually believe me?”
“Yeah? She vanished into thin air. Most people who are alive can’t do that.” She mused, sitting next to him.
“What’s her name, anyway?”
“Her name was Circe.”
It was the one thing he remembered, even over his own name and family. He remembered being a medic. He remembered her being assigned to protect him. He remembered her death. Odysseus couldn’t get it out of his head. When Captain Cuttlefish had asked his name, Odysseus had nearly answered ‘Circe’.
“I don’t know how to explain it.” He droned. “She just got sick. A parasite, I found out. Now she’s gone.”
Odysseus wondered if his squad blamed him. He knew he blamed himself. She had been dead the moment she touched the water that had infected her. It was a known hazard, and she had waved him off when he had told her off for going near it. She never wanted to listen to him, always finding something new to use to mess with him. She had said that it was cute that he always got so grumpy about the things she did.
“Hey uh-“
“She would stand by my bed and watch me sleep. I’d just stare at the wall, hoping she’d just leave, but she wouldn’t. The night she died, I turned and looked at her. I shouldn’t have because she smiled, and she told me to follow her. I’d had no idea we were that close to the beach. She stopped at the shoreline and told me that she needed to go.”
He wondered if she’d been in pain. If she had been able to feel herself losing control of her own mind. He wondered if she blamed him. He vaguely remembered an old story, about his namesake. It was a human story. How the witch Circe had tried to keep the hero Odysseus at sea forever. It didn’t have a happy ending for either of them. But he was no hero, not really. He wasn’t a hero, and his childhood friend wasn’t a witch .
“Agent Eight.”
“She wanted me to come with her, and we spent maybe an hour there with her trying to convince me to get in the water. When I told her I couldn’t, she grabbed my hands and told me she’d miss me. Then she just walked until she disappeared under the water.”
They never found her body. They never even tried. Instead, one of the elites had found him curled up in the sand. He’d apparently been crying until he fell asleep. They wouldn’t let him out of their sights for months.
“We dug at each other a lot.” His voice was dour and quiet. “But never seriously.”
“We’d been friends since we were kids. Everyone thought we were two halves of a whole. She was so bright and loud. She was personable and saccharine and happy in a way I could never be. It felt like everyone liked her better, and now she’s gone and it’s just me.”
Odysseus had always been… sick. He was an excellent fighter, but he was always tired, always in pain. He remembered being told in no uncertain terms that he would either be on the sidelines, or he wouldn’t be a soldier. There was no room on the frontline for someone like him. It was for his safety, they said, that he shouldn’t fight. What if he fainted in the middle of battle?
“I think you maybe need to use those coping skills you and Agent Three were talking about.”
Odysseus blinked. How long had he been digging his claws into his arm? He picked out box breathing. It didn’t help as much as he wanted it to.
“I shouldn’t have… Said all that. Sorry.”
“No ‘shoulds’ or ‘shouldn’ts’. Besides, I think I know how you feel. On that last part, I mean. Callie’s always been the one people seem to like more.”
For the next twenty minutes, he listens carefully to her stories of growing up with eyes constantly watching her every move, of never being able to trust if someone wants to be her friend for her , or if they want to be her friend for her status . How no matter what she actually wanted to sing, she’d always been forced to perform in a way that didn’t fit. How she hated cameras, and singing in front of a crowd. She talked about how she’d always been scared of losing Callie. Then, she talked about how that happened anyway, and she talked about the events that led up to it, starting from that final Splatfest.
Marie is prickly, and defensive, and slow to trust. She’s prideful, and determined, and not nearly as mature as she makes herself out to be. Marie has a shockingly dry sense of humor, and a
lot
of talent that people don’t seem to recognize. Odysseus realizes they couldn’t be more similar.